Escalation of everything

by Elidjz

Unholy interaction

"Kill, maim, murder, kill and destroy. Did I mention kill?"

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Ruff Saw, an earth pony, was busy doing his job, which was cutting trees. Normally he would have been doing this with a smile on his face however today he was worried. The Hippogryph that had been staying at the hotel in their little village had been gone for a whole day and left most of his stuff in his room. He'd made it quite clear that he would only be gone for a few hours. On its own this was nothing to worry about. However the other thing was that the woods were a bit too silent.

Usually this was one of the hardest places in Equestria to live in, with bears and wolves attacking the town almost every week and there always was some animal hiding just outside the town waiting for a lone pony to leave. But none of that had happened. Just one very silent and calm day, which was hard to imagine for most ponies in town. They had to build walls around their town.

It had made working unnerving. The little town of hard creak was not one of the best places to live due to how dangerous the woods around it were. It was nowhere as dangerous as the Everfree forest, but in this case the town was completely surrounded by the tall trees. Especially since two ponies that had decided to go search for the Hippogryph on their own, hadn't come back or heard from after six hours.

But this hadn't stopped them from working, so Ruff Saw and everypony else were doing what they always did. Ruff took his ax in his teeth and swung it and slowly cut a tree down before hacking it into pieces on the eastern edge of the town. The earth pony put the logs into the special woodsled that he always dragged with him.

While putting logs into the sled, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something tiny and red had just run by, using the many of the carts and other logs that had been left there as cover, directly into the woods. Ruff's instinct told him that whatever that was might be related to why the woods had been this silent.

Quickly looking around he saw that nopony else was around. They were all either in town or working on the other edges of the town. So against his better judgment Ruff went after the red thing on his own. He found some strange tracks, on one side the mark was just a single dot and on the other side it looked like the paw marks of a Four toed lizard. Which was strange as there were no four toed lizards around here.

Following the tracks he reached a tiny clearing not too far from town. Inside it was a camp, with ramshackle tents and dimly lit fires. And he saw the red thing he had followed. And it was ugly. Its skull was elongated with white badly trimmed hair, the horns on the back of it were broken and partially broken , a big scar in its forehead, its left eye was swollen shut and its right one was blood red. Its left leg was a pegleg and its right one had four clawed toes, thus explaining the strange tracks. Its right hand fingers ended in sharp claws while its right was missing, replaced with a rusty hook nailed and sewn into its place. Its tail was short and chubby.

And it was not alone. A dozen other creatures like it were laying around one of the campfires. They all had similar wounds and appearances, though some had patches of black fur or scales. They all wore very torn clothes. On the fire there was a big rusty pan. Ruff Saw saw a blue hoof poking out of the pan, which he recognised as belonging to one of the two ponies that had gone after the Hippogryph.

This left him horrified. The red creatures grabbed broken and rusted swords before limping towards him. The creatures let out weak gargling laughs. Ruff turned to run away, but he saw that another half-a-dozen of those creatures had snuck behind him.

One suddenly lunged at him awkwardly swinging its rusty ax.

Ruff easily dodged the attack and then bucked it. The creature was sent flying into one of the tents. They were weak and their bones were brittle and clearly had no idea how, or at least lacked the strength, to properly use their weapons. So Ruff swung his ax around and bucked wildly, easily taking all the creatures that got too close.

The ones he wounded did not stay down for long, as weak as they were, and more seemed to come from everywhere. Ruff was surrounded by well over half-a-hundred of them. Though they were too scared to get close.

Then more of the creatures appeared. They looked exactly the same as the others, but were slightly taller, had all of their limbs, wore pieces of chainmail and broken pieces of metal and carried rusted spears and broken shields. One lunged its spear at Ruff. He swung his ax around parrying the strike which caused the spears to pretty disintegrate.

While the creatures' pathetic attempts at fighting and the atrocious condition of their weapons reassured him that the town could defend themselves from these vile creatures.

And then even more creatures appeared.

Except this ones instead of being weak and brittle were tall and muscular with long sharp horns and three blood red eyes staring hatefully at the pony. They carried massive swords, hammers, maces and axes which had become red from blood. They were covered in ramshackle armor, animal skulls and more horns protruding out of their arms.

Even more appeared covered head to toe, and they were very big, in so much armor that every step made the ground.

Fortunately all of the bigger creatures were coming from a single direction, meaning that he could still escape by pushing through the weak and brittle ones. Which he did.

One of the fully armored ones let out a hate filled, bloodthirsty scream. All the creatures then ran after the pony. Fortunately they were much slower than Ruff. Mainly due to the fact that the big ones kept tripping and stepping onto the tiny ones.

Ruff reached the town and shouted as loud as he could to warn everypony. At first everypony was confused until they could hear the loud screams coming from the woods. Everypony then quickly entered the town and closed the town gates. The ponies quickly armed themselves with axes and whatever other tools they had before heading to face whatever threat was coming their way.

Some ponies tried to ask Ruff Saw what he had seen outside, but was interrupted when something started banging against the door. He entered one of the taller buildings to have a better view of the area. Reaching the top floor and looked out a window.

The creatures were pouring out of the woods, not only from where he had come but from every other side. The entire town was surrounded as a red wave of creatures were pouring out of the woods. The tiny ones were putting ladder ups to climb over the walls and the big ones were quite literally punching through the town gates.

Ruff was utterly horrified by the sight. He was panicking so much that he didn't notice that one of the demons, wearing nicer but still torn robes, lifted its hands which started to glow. The demon then swung its hands around, throwing a fireball at the building where Ruff was inside. The entire top floor and every pony inside were quickly turned to ash.

The ponies put up a good fight, but the demon's superior numbers and greater experience won the fight. They took a lot of pleasure burning everything down.

Some of the ponies, mainly the foals, managed to escape through an old tunnel that had been dug under the town. Their only intention was to get as far away and warn the rest of Equestria from the bloodthirsty horde.

Said horde would soon head towards Canterlot as its leader had unfinished business with Celestia.

Author's Note:

Critism welcome.
I feel like this chapter is very badly paced. Well more than usual.